Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

You think the Abominable Snowman is scary? Feh! I didn’t finish my Christmas shopping until December 23rd. Now, that’s scary.

I just hope there’s a Carl Kolchak action figure under the tree for me… I totally need one, now that I know they exist. (There’s a Barnabas Collins action figure out there, too… Oh please, Santa, please! I really have been a good grrrl this time!)

I can only begin to tell you how relieved I am that I don’t have to deal with Christmastime travel this year. Especially when I hear of the Denver airport (a frequent stopover for me on my flights between Salt Lake and Sarnia) having been closed for a few days because of inclement weather… Brrr, I wouldn’t need that bonus stresser to add to the already noxious mix… The expensive flights! The busy airports! The full planes! The late take-offs and landings! The missed connections! The crowded overhead bins! The lost luggage! The screaming babies! The stress the stress the stress! Plus, I’d've had to’ve gotten my Christmas shopping done a helluva lot earlier than, um, yesterday. And I’d've had to buy only stuff that could travel well (and wouldn’t cause an international incident with airport security or at Customs). Nope, don’t miss that. So instead of sitting, stranded and freaked out, in the Denver airport, this year’s Christmas prep has been so laid back that I was able to go for a 10k run yesterday and a 5k today. Instead of mulling over the suitability of gifts that can withstand my bag getting run over on the tarmac by airport baggage handlers, I was able to go to my sister’s yearly ultra chi-chi martini party this year. Instead of wrapping everything when I got home the day before Christmas, the wrapping’s all done already this year. Instead of having to postpone Dad’s birthday ’til I got into town, we could have it on the right day this year. Intead of being bummed out that I was just gonna hafta get on another goddamn plane next week and head back down to SLC, I am happy to report that my employment contract has been renewed and I am all set for 2007.

It was a memorable year–mostly for good reasons. I got to come home, I bought my first new car, I took up running and ran my first race, and I got to meet one of my favourite film directors and see a show by one of my favourite bands. Sure, there were some things I regret now… Like, f’r'instance, that two hundred and fifty fucking nine dollar speeding ticket. But, overall, it has been a pretty good year for me.

I have been cheered by the successes of my friends, too: Karen and Chris and Craig and Vail all got new jobs, Todd got not only a new job but also had a solo exhibit of his art, Peter and Kelly (the mysterious “K”–revealed at last!) aced various and sundry long-distance races, Laurie took up the sport, too, and finished her Learn To Run clinic with flying colours and will be running her first race on New Year’s Eve… It goes on and on. Congratulations to all my friends on all their accomplishments in 2006!

Merry Christmas, everybody. And thanks for reading this navel-gazing kvetch-fest this year.

chi also ch’i or Qi or qi (chē)
n. The vital force believed in Taoism and other Chinese thought to be inherent in all things. The unimpeded circulation of chi and a balance of its negative and positive forms in the body are held to be essential to good health in traditional Chinese medicine.

-The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.)

Upon consideration, I am not so sure I have a serious enough personality to master chi running.

“Oh. Quelle surprise,” sez youse.

(Quit rollin’ yer eyeballs.)

At the day-long clinic I attended, I kept getting brain cramps and subsequent fits of giggles when I tried to get into posture for it…

Step 1: Relax the lower half of the body… Shake out my legs (shake out what?), relax my knees (without falling down, natch), and find the (so-called) sweet spot on my feet. This is a very Goldilocksian exercise wherein I shift about on my feet until I don’t feel pressure on the outside of the feet or on the inside of the feet or on the balls of the feet or anywhere else, for that matter. Everything’s s’posed to feel copacetic. Not too hot, not too cold. Just riiiiiiiight. But, y’know, perfect balance is just not one of my oh-so-many (*cough*) physical gifts, so this isn’t as easy as it sounds. I still haven’t a clue if I even have a sweet spot on my feet. I suspect my feet’s sweet spot is likely up—on, say, the couch.

Step 2: Open up the top half of the body… I thought finding the sweet spot was difficult, but this second step is almost incomprehensible. Place the thumb and middle finger of one hand just under the clavicle (er, am I s’posed to know where that is? shit, I don’t know if I can even spell it!) and pull up. Place the other hand with the thumb on the belly button and pull down. Umm. Whut? Why am I s’posed to stretch my skin? Surely I am not understanding this… I look around. Nobody else seems to be questioning this. So I do it. Or I think I am doing it. I don’t fucking know. Just play along, Carla, and wipe that damned smirk off your face. I believe what we’re trying to do is stretch the torso so that our lungs can fill more completely but all I can feel is my stomach muscles contracting as I try to hide my giggles.

Step 3: Extend the spine… This involves craning the back of my head up and my chin down (but not out!) to meet my index finger, which is now extended from my clavicle (or whatever it is) death-grip. My eyes dart left, right. Is anybody else looking uncertain? Yeah, there might be a few other knitted brows in the group.

Step 4: Level the pelvis… Move the upper hand around to the small of the back and “engage the lower abs”. This involves using the lower ab muscles (and not yer keester!) to flatten the spine of the lower back. No clenching back there. Stop that.

Step 5: Tilt the statue… While maintaining the engagement of the lower abs (ie. not bending at the waist), tilt forward about a quarter of an inch (a quarter inch sounds imperceptible but doesn’t feel that way). In correct tilt, the hands should naturally rest against front of the upper thighs. I feel decidedly Neanderthal in his position. “Oooga chucka. Oooga oooga oooga chucka.”

…and that is the basic chi running posture. If you are correctly in posture, it is your bones that are keeping you up—not your muscles—and the instructor should be able to come up behind you, place his hands on your shoulders and hang his full weight off you without pulling you down and without your muscles engaging to keep you up. I have serious doubts about this. But he does it to me and we don’t end up in a heap on the floor. I am somewhat amazed.

To run, you lean forward from the ankles, maintaining a straight line from ankles through hips through shoulders to head. There are four “gears”—each one with a slightly increased angle of lean. As someone who has a naturally straight upright running gait, this feels very unnatural. But it also feels like something you can get used to, with enough practise. And enough concentration—because while you are running, you need to “check in with your posture” at frequent and regular intervals. Make sure the lower abs are still engaged, the tilt is just so, the spine is extended, etcetera etcetera. There’s more to chi running than just posture (like arm position and pump, foot plant, and so on) but posture is at the root of it all.

But keep in mind that my description of all this may be a little outta whack (which might explain my struggles to check and regain my posture throughout the day)… ‘Cause as soon as the instructor explained that the chi running posture is slightly “C”-shaped to keep the chi from spilling out, well, er… my previously open mind clanged shut. Keeeerang! I’m sure the sound echoed off the walls of the gymnasium we were in. Flaky mystical hoohaw (*cough* - no offence! - *cough*) is not my cuppa. I am simply looking for a way to run that might spare me from some injury, especially with these wonky knees of mine. Tha’s all. None of this “Snatch the pebble from my palm, Grasshopper” happy crappy.

We did a number of drills throughout the day and I think I might’ve done a few of them right. Towards the end of the day we went out to a local high school and used its racetrack to videorecord our gaits. When it came to be my turn to run, and with the instructor’s camera pointed at me, I stood there at the starting line and my brain went numb. Apparently, I’d been concentrating so hard on not letting my chi spill outta my belly button that I didn’t notice my brains leakin’ outta my ears! Flop sweat popped. Couldn’t remember the first thing about the posture. Luckily, I am relatively self-aware and quite comfortable laughing at myself (I get a lotta practice at it, y’see). That relaxed me and I got myself moving, but had never really gotten myself into posture and had no idea of how to “check in with my posture” while I was actually moving, so it was a rather futile—albeit amusing–little jaunt around the track. Captured for eternity on disk (unless, of course, that was a re-writable disk the instructor had in his camera—plz, God?).

At the end of the day, I was still interested enough to buy the book and give this thing a fair trial. Needs. Must. Not. Spill. Chi.

Incidentally, the next day, I ran 15k and not one step of it was chi running. ‘Cause I couldn’t remember how to do it.

Six months after having started to run, I have almost entirely lost touch with the person who inspired me to try it in the first place. Still, I run. So at least something good came out of that aborted relationship. I was hoping for more, natch, but it ended up being a lotta talk and notta lotta action. Damned shame, too, ‘cause I rilly liked him. I thought there was the potential for a genuine connection there. *heavy sigh*

What I’m left with (aside from the small, blunt pang I still feel whenever I think of him) is an activity that I am finally rilly enjoying. It took a while, but about a month ago I noticed that I had begun to look forward to going out for a run. After five months of slogging, I had doubted that I would ever get over that hump of having to push myself to get out there and do it and then being relieved when I was finished! But now, whenever I am unable to go out at my usual times, I feel it missing from my day and it’s frustrating. I think I noticed the mental change the first time I got out the door in my running gear, discovered a chilly, steady rain falling, shrugged, and went for my run anyway. And it made me feel like a little kid out there in the rain, getting soaked to the skin and not giving a shit about it.

I think my new li’l iPod shuffle

–which I had engraved with Run Faster!–has made a big difference. I actually have a real smile on my face when I’m running, now (instead of a Mats Sundin-like grimace… look at his face when he returns to the Leafs bench after a shift and you’ll see what I mean). Sometimes, I even sing along. Or, rather, “sing” along. Gawd, I wonder if my neighbours have ever heard me bark out “September gurls do so much…” as I ran past their homes at 5:30 in the morning. Oops. (Well, shit, you’re supposed to keep a pace where you’re able to talk while you’re running but if you’re by yourself, surely singing is the equivalent to that and is slightly less crazy-looking than talking to yourself …right?)

I have had people tell me that they’d rather not have a shuffle because they want control over what they listen to, but I kinda like the randomness of the mixes, the surprises, the sometimes wild shifts in tone and style, and I think the anticipation of what the next song is gonna be keeps me out running longer than I might normally. F’r'instance, last Sunday I ran 8 miles–that’s almost 13k, the longest I’ve run so far!–and I think it was largely because I was enjoying the tunes while I was running.

So, with all that said, it is with great alarm that I regard my wonky knees. They were fine after that long run on Sunday. Felt fine ’til Wednesday night, when I went for a 6k run with my Running Room 5k clinic group. Not sure if I was trying to go too fast or what, but my right knee has been aching since then. Two weeks before, it was the left knee that felt sore after a run with my clinic group (and I went on a brief stint of anti-inflammatories prescribed by my doctor for it). These knees have a bit of a history… They were fine until I made the mistake of listening to one of my Utah cousins, who recommended the hike up to Timpanogos Cave National Monument. “Oh, it’s easy. The path is paved.” Yeah, but she didn’t tell me the fucking path was at pretty much a 45° angle for a mile and a half. Except for those places where it was steeper. Ay-yi-yi…

Going up was hard, I’ll tellya. Especially in the 100° F heat. The caves, themselves, were a joy to reach if only because it was 30-40° cooler inside. But once we made our way all the way through the cave system, we hadda walk all that way back down again. And I think it was the trip back down that did the number on my knees. ‘Gravity is a harsh mistress’, as The Tick sez. I was fine until a few days later when I was sitting quietly at work, not doing anything weird–just sitting there at my desk, working dinking around as usual. All of a sudden, it felt as if someone (a midget was my first thought–don’t ask me why, ‘cause, honestly, I give my head a shake over that one, too) had crawled under my desk and stabbed me right in the fucking knee. I think I might’ve yelped. I sat very still, shocked, wondering WTF. Then–oof!–there it was again!! I hadn’t moved, fer crissakes–what the hell was going on?! It happened a few more times that day, then happened from time to time over the next few days. Each time it happened, I had been sitting quite still–it’s not like some movement had provoked it. Eventually it stopped happening. (No, I never did catch sight of that pesky midget. The little bastard.) When I took up the treadmill (boring as hell–that lasted only a few months) a coupla years ago, I wore a tensor brace on that left knee, on the advice of a friend. No recurrance of the stabbing pain. No trouble at all from the knees, actually, until recently.

That it is happening now is distressing. Since I have come to enjoy running, I don’t want to have to quit because my stupid knees are balking.

So tomorrow, I am going to a chi running clinic. Must. Focus. On. Dantian. Oooh, gotta pee.

Well, the Globe gave it a good review but the folks I was with and the band, they’s own selfs, thought it was kinda mediocre. Personally, I can’t complain; I enjoyed m’self.

I’ve loved Sloan for a long time… I can still remember my friend Frank telling me, way back when, that Jay Ferguson

—who worked at Frank’s record store in Halifax—was in some new band called Sloan. I thought, “Oh, how cool is that?!” Jay’s such a doll. A real sweetheart of a guy. He useta work extra hours at the store so that Frank could take extra time off to hang out with me whenever I came for a visit. In all the years since then, I have never managed to catch a live performance by Jay’s li’l band. ‘Til last week.

Last Thursday evening, Frank and Mike and I made our way through the wind and rain that had soaked Tronna to the skin all day down to Kool Haus, on Lakeshore. It’d been a looong time since I’d seen a club show: X, at Club Xscape in Salt Lake back in November of ‘02. I hate going to shows alone, y’see… And back then, down there, I didn’t know anybody who’d wanna go to that show. So I sucked it up and went by myself because X is my favourite band. And it was the original lineup–mit Billy Zoom–so I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity, despite my discomfort in going alone. A coupla months ago I bought tickets to see The New Pornographers (coincidentally, also at Kool Haus), but Frank hadda back outta going with me ‘cause he discovered he was already going to another show that night. Couldn’t find anybody else to go and there was no way was I gonna drive all the way to Tronna to go to a show by myself, so I ate those tickets. Needed a serious dose of Pepto Dismal for that indigestion, I’ll tellya… So do you think a deluge that would’ve furrowed Noah’s brow a few sprinkles could stop me from seeing Sloan? Nah.

Back in the day (the day being when I worked at Records on Wheels), I useta go to club shows all the time. If Wheels sold tickets for a show, we usually could get into it for free. Went to so many shows and drank so many beers that my memory of what bands I saw is hazy, dreamy, and I am unsure about a lot of it. While we were standing around half-listening to the opening band–The Yoko Casionos–on Thursday night, Frank and I were telling Mike tales of the (g)olden days… One memory that stuck with me (and Frank confirmed) was an example of truly appalling behaviour on my part. It was a Smithereens show at the old Diamond club. As usual for those days, I was several sheets to the wind by the time the band took the stage. And there was this person standing in front of me on the floor in front of the stage (Frank called it a “him”, but I remember it as a “her”–take yer pick, it doesn’t really matter). S/he was wearing a big puffy white down jacket. For some reason, this person was irritating me. Not sure if it was just because his/her bulk was blocking my view of the band (Frank’s theory) or if s/he was dancing around in my personal space (my theory). I smoked back then. Pack a day. Out drinking, it’d be a whole pack in just an evening. Benson & Hedges 100s. (Tangentially speaking, I started smoking in uni–wanted to vicariously taste a professor I had a crush on… and he smoked Benson & Hedges 100s. Took *this* long for me to get hooked on ‘em.)(BTW, if these things were any indication, he tasted terrible. Alas, by the time I discovered that fact, so did I.) So there I was at the Smithereens show–drunkenly pissed off at the Michelin (Wo?)Man in front of me, and armed with a pack of long cigarettes. I cringe, now, at the thought of his/her unpleasant surprise when s/he got home and discovered all the holes I’d so carefully burned into the back of that white jacket… And now you see why I’m not too upset by the fact that I don’t remember a lot about those days: I’d just as soon not remember assholery of that magnitude. And you also begin to see why I don’t drink anymore. *smiles demurely*

So sucking back the $4 club sodas at Kool Haus left me with a clear memory of the night. They played a lotta songs off their new release, Never Hear the End of It, and I can’t complain about that because it is a strong record. It is filled with really well written songs with sweet & hooky melodies.

I’d been mighty disappointed with Action Pact, so my joy over NHTEOI is large, and I was quite happy to hear them cover so much of it in their show. Some folks mighta been annoyed by that focus on the new album, but not me. While I must admit I was sorta hoping to hear “Underwhelmed” (which they didn’t play), I can at least content myself with having had the opportunity to reaquaint myself with the girl they wrote it for when we went backstage after the show…

All during the opening act and then throughout much of Sloan’s performance, Frank was casting his gaze around the room–looking for members of what he called The Halifax Mafia. I guess it’s not unusual for lotsa ex-Haligonians to go to any show that Sloan does in Toronto. Finally, he spied the tour manager and scrambled after him. They came back to Mike and I and tied wristbands on us so that we could get backstage after the show.

Man, it’s been years since I went backstage after a show, and 99% of my memories of having done it are (surprise, surprise) suspended in a murk of beer and smoke. So it was nice to be able to not make an ass of myself this time. Of all of the people back there, I had only ever met Jay and the girl who co-inspired the aforementioned song. That meant I knew at least two more people than Mike did, but he is an outgoing charmer and it didn’t take him long to get comfortable. Natch, Frank knew pretty much everybody back there. The verdict amongst the band members was that it was just an okay show. I’d noticed that Jay and Andrew sometimes wobbled a little off-tune but that is part of their charm, eh? Frank pointed out that the crowd wasn’t the typical raucous Sloan audience (which is an opinion expressed by others at Sloan’s website) and mebbe that affected the performance. Or mebbe it was the other way around. Ye olde chicken-and-the-egg argument. Hard for me to say, really, since I don’t have any previous Sloan show/Sloan crowd with which to compare it. So I had a great time!

And Jay’s still a doll. Still a real sweetheart of a guy.